A while ago, I won an Ipod in a company raffle. I gave it to my wife as a present and she uses it sometimes.
When it came time to get an MP3 player for myself, I went with a Creative Labs model (Zen Vision M). I’m very happy with it, but there is one problem I seem to be having with buying music so that both of us can put it on our players.
I know that I can’t use iTunes music. I also know that the Ipod can’t play subscription music from Yahoo or other such sources.
Does anyone know of any good music sites that we can both use. It doesn’t have to be a subscription service – I’m more than willing to purchase the music outright - the only conditions are that (1) it has to be compatible with both of our players and (2) it has to be music that we like.
No, I wasn’t aware of that. Legally, we have to buy two copies??? Does the same apply to music we rip from CDs (do we legally have to have two CDs to put it on two MP3 players?
Kind of a backwards way of doing it, but I’d suggest buying from the iTunes store and putting it on the iPod. Then burn it to a CD, then re-rip it and put it on your Zen as an unprotected MP3.
Another way in which DRM doesn’t prevent doing what you want, but it makes it more of a headache than it needs to be.
Or buy the music on CD, or buy from a site which gives you an unprotected MP3. I think emusic does that, but their selection isn’t as big as some sites. I used to use allofmp3.com, but I think that’s a no-go for Americans these days.
there are several utilities out there that can strip the DRM of your legally acquired music so you can place it wherever you want. I won’t link as we are not supposed to link to “illegal” activities but they are everywhere.
I subscribe to E-Music. It’s cheap ($20/month for 90 downloads), but that’s mostly because they don’t have the big labels (the ones who won’t deal with companies not willing to charge $0.99 per song or who won’t brook that DRM stuff) but there’s still a surprising amount of good stuff there. It’s all DRM-free MP3 format, plays on any music player. They even have a pretty compelling free trial: 15 days and 25 song downloads, and if you don’t want to pony up you can cancel and keep the downloads. Legally, at that. I had to install a download manager to grab their files, but that wasn’t much of a problem, and there’s no spammy stuff or spyware or crap. (They’re not a file sharing thing like Napster, they’re a more traditional web-based music warehouse)
As it’s been said on the board, when you buy a CD you aren’t buying the actual music on it, but rather the cd itself. You are allowed to listen to the cd any place you want.
Fair use allows you to convert the CD into MP3 but you can not listen to both at the same time. The record labels would say that you need to have two physical cd’s to have the same mp3 loaded on two mp3 players. I say thats a topic for great debates and I don’t venture into that forum.
I believe that the laws regarding entertainment for personal use need to be changed . From an RIAA interview you can see that
"(C) [What are we buying when we buy entertainment media?]
When you buy a CD, you should feel free to consume the music. That means you should listen to that disc, and feel free to make a copy of that disc for your own use so that you can have a copy in your home and your office. You should feel free to copy it onto other formats, such as .mp3, so that you can listen to it on your computer. You should feel free to copy it to cassette.
The only time you run into problems is if you begin to distribute your copies to others."
Individuals are not permitted to make copies of their copyrighted recordings and distribute them to others without permission from the copyright owner. Whether or not you do it for free or for profit is irrelevant; the impact on the copyright owner is the same, they do not have the ability to sell their artistic work to others because they have received an unauthorized free copy.
The Audio Home Recording Act permits individuals who are using special Digital Audio Recording Devices (such as Mini-Disc Players or Digital Audio Tape Recorders) to make limited copies for their “noncommercial” personal use. It does not permit individuals to make copies on other digital devices for distribution to friends or other people.
Thus if you buy a CD it’s legal for you to listen to it or an MP3 if you are not using the cd. If you lend your CD you are supposed to destroy your MP3 because you no longer have the cd. Because it says individiual, your wife can not legally use an MP3 off your cd. But I’d love to see that go to court
That’s what I did when I moved from a Rio Carbon to an iPod Nano. $15 dollar utility saved $hundreds of legally purchased music. I’m back to buying CDs, so I can get a better quality AND avoid the DRM hassle.
